Call it the million-dollar lie: Minnesotans are finding how costly it can be to allow vaccination foes to spread counter-factual misinformation in vulnerable populations. Doing so has helped fuel one of the North Star state’s worst recent outbreaks of measles among international refugees in the Twin Cities area. The highly contagious infection has swept through….
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Experts find cancer-causing HPV a widely spread infection among U.S. adults
More Americans ages 18 to 59 may be infected with the human papilloma virus (HPV) than previously had been known, with 1 in 4 men and 1 in 5 women carrying high-risk strains, federal experts say. The new findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may become a key part of campaigns to….
Continue ReadingPublic health, preventive care programs may take billion-dollar hit
When it comes to the nation’s health, the Trump Administration and the GOP-dominated Congress seem determined to prove they know how to do penny-wise and pound-foolish. They’re amply demonstrating this with proposed slashes in the nation’s basic budget for public health. They’re calling for a $1 billion cut for the Centers for Disease Control and….
Continue ReadingIn Cleveland and in DC, a new outbreak of ridiculousness on vaccinations
In 1798, Edward Jenner, an English physician, published a small pamphlet that forever changed the course of medicine. The pamphlet described how vaccinations could prevent infectious diseases. But more than two centuries after his lifesaving breakthrough, which has sidelined some of the planet’s worst scourges, how is it that a leading physician at one of the….
Continue ReadingCandidates’ health circus offers a rational reminder: need a pneumonia shot?
The news circus about the health of presidential candidates gives us a good excuse to mention a smart preventive care measure for both very young and older Americans: vaccination against pneumonia. Yes, there are many different kinds, both of the illness and the preventative inoculation. Pneumonia, for which there are at least 30 causes, can….
Continue ReadingWith Olympics ready to go, Miami, not Rio, is epicenter of Zika buzz
The 2016 Summer Olympic Games are about to launch, and who would have guessed that Miami, and not Rio, is the city that officials are buzzing about because of the tropical malady Zika? State and local officials say they are stepping up the battle against the mosquito-borne scourge after confirming four locally contracted Zika cases….
Continue ReadingFDA approves trial for zika vaccine
Federal officials have advanced a key way to combat the zika virus, permitting clinical trials of a vaccine against the tropical infection. The Food and Drug Administration has approved the preliminary testing of GLS-5700, an experimental vaccine by Inovio, of Plymouth Meeting, Pa., and GeneOne Life Science, of Seoul, South Korea. It is the….
Continue ReadingCancer specialists campaign for kids to get HPV vaccine
When it comes to inoculations for kids, cancer doctors want more preteens to get the vaccine against the human papilloma virus (HPV), while public health officials are encouraging shots and discouraging the use of a nasal mist to protect children against seasonal flu. The campaign for HPV shots has shifted among medical experts, the Washington….
Continue ReadingHPV vaccination campaign curbing cervical cancer, researchers say
Although the opposition has veered between passive and ferocious, an immunization against a virus that causes cervical cancer has cut the virus’s prevalence in teen girls by two-thirds, researchers say. That’s good news in the fight against cervical cancer, which kills more than 4,000 women a year in the United States. Cervical cancer appears even more….
Continue ReadingSome good news on early cervical cancer detection, birth control availability
With the presidential campaigns under way and some partisans playing crazy with health care issues, it’s refreshing to find some good news to report about women’s reproductive issues, specifically, increases in early diagnoses in young women of treatable cervical cancer and calm, quiet efforts in two states to empower pharmacists to prescribe birth control medications. Researchers….
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